In the 1970s my wife and I worked with kids with intellectual disabilities – everyone still called it “mental retardation” back then and many people took their doctor’s advice and put their kids “away.”

At River View, a small institution outside Philadelphia, “going home” was all the kids talked about. And it wasn't memories that kept the flame alive: some of them - like Alyse, one of the TeePee Girls, whose wrists had been broken years before and never set properly - had nothing but bad times to remember. No, home was something deeper than memory; it was something akin to order or justice - they'd been turned out before their time; nothing could go on until that wrong was addressed.

All the kids talked about going home; there was one little boy, though, who had a different twist: he wanted to go home all right - but maybe he was confused about what exactly the word "home" meant.

". . . with you," he always added. "I go home with you?"

This was Aaron. Or as he pronounced it, "Addie . . . Addie Rikkerds." Aaron Richards.

"I go home with you?"

This was the way it was gonna be. He was a little boy obsessed. If he was outside and a car he didn't recognize came up the drive, he was uncontrollable. He would break from his group - he was one of the Wigwam Boys - and run to the driver's window, often not bothering to wait for the car to come to a stop.

"I go home with you. I go home," he'd say shielding his eyes and peering in at the driver even before the window was rolled down.

He was seven years old, a wiry little boy in jeans and a striped T-shirt with a smile to melt lead. His black skin was dry and ashen except for the area under his wide nostrils which was alternately wet or crystal-white with dried moisture. And he was in constant motion.

We’d been hired to be house-parents in a group home. We poured over the kids’ records: Aaron’s mother was in a mental health facility; his father was in jail; Aaron had lived in seven or nine or ten foster homes - different social workers had different counts. Finally, he’d been sent out to River View just months before we came ourselves.

Aaron did come to live with us in the group home – but not like the other kids. Our agency, we found out, had made a devil’s pact with the neighbors: OK to the disabilities, as long as none of the kids was black. We went to court and became Aaron’s legal guardians and he came to live with us as part of our “fam-i-ny,” as Aaron says it. And then, years later, when both his mother and his father had passed away, the three of us went to adoption court and made it official.

Karl Williams has published two books with leaders in the self-advocacy movement (the civil rights work of people with intellectual disabilities). His work has appeared in magazines (most recently in Carpe Articulum) and books, as well as on stage, in videos, and on websites; songs from his five CDs have been aired on NBC and Fox and on radio stations around the world. http://www.karlwilliams.com